


Goalposts

by dancerinthedrink



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anal Sex, Drunk Sex, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Not Beta Read, Pining, google translate russian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 12:09:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20723978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancerinthedrink/pseuds/dancerinthedrink
Summary: Boris misses the real Theo. The one that doesn't fuck him half-mad into the night.





	Goalposts

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone would like to correct my poorly translated Russian, I welcome you with open arms.

Theo was a blackout drunk. He drank the way Boris imagined his father had: guiltily, always aware Mrs. Decker would be disappointed if she knew. The type of drinking that drove him to Vegas in the first place. 

It was almost funny when it happened. At least it was when Boris was at the same level of intoxication, not caring how close Theo was to the pool, his legs catching on one another as Popchyk barked at his heels. Boris was probably on something else those nights too. Lines of Vicodin, Percocet, the ounce of coke he once managed to poach from Kotku’s mom’s boyfriend; lines of snowy white like the powdered sugar they ordered on their waffles from the Original Pancake House; lines like aerial views of Dutch tulip fields; Semper Augustus without the bloodstains of consumption.

He had to be high not to care otherwise he’d be by Theo’s side, playing along while acting as the sturdy barre to Theo’s windmilling ballerina. 

But it really was horrible. To see Theo, half a foot shorter than him, shooting back vodka until his glasses were useless at helping him see straight. To see Theo’s face twist in confusion when Boris brought up things that happened on those nights.

Boris didn’t know what he expected when Theo careened back into his life, melancholic and tall as a tree; high as a motherfucker, in his sweaters and horn-rims. Were they to just pick up where they left off, with so many years between them? Apparently so.

Thus Boris had done what he always had. He played the fun friend with opportunity and access to every pleasure known to man. Got Gyuri to drive them in circles around the blistering lights of Times Square. Let Theo ramble over his lady loves. Plied him with booze and dope until he became amiable to forgive a betrayal of the highest degree. 

If Theo knew he had been given a Judas kiss in the desert, would he had been so quick to throw his arm around Boris and go off like old times?

So many times while working for Mr. Silver Boris thought about scraping together the money for a plane ticket to New York, knowing well enough Theo would stay put - he planned to slip the painting behind Theo’s headboard and voila; problem solved, no secret left to keep - but he never had the courage to do it.

It was easier to drag the painting behind him like Linus’s blanket, pretending it was a useful bargaining chip instead of admitting the obvious.

There were times in Russia when he still had the obvious bones of a teenager; when he was on a business trip to pick up the painting to deliver it to some head-up-his-own-ass elitist; when it was the heart of winter, the country dark and dead that Boris would unlatch the briefcase and stare at that sad little bird, the candlelight colors glowing from out of the black lining. The bird Theo had seen his mother in, seen honking taxicabs, seen the dust bunnied corners of his small apartment, emerald earrings, equestrian based memories, and Chinese food restaurants. Boris couldn’t make himself see anything like that. Instead, he saw two different shades of blood, chlorine blue, a sunrise messy bedroom, a soft cheek too close to be in focus. He would lower his forehead as near to the canvas as could to go without touching it, wracked with the hope it would emit what he wasn’t getting from his three winter coats, two woolen scarves, and newspaper-stuffed boots.

The banks of snow and ice stretched on for miles, blinding under the reflection of the moon. It was almost like the desert. Expect when snow met your lips it faded under the heat of your tongue; sand stayed. Sand got under your nails and in your scalp. It mixed with the rheum in the corners of your eyes so you had to scrap it away each morning. Months after he left Vegas, Boris still found traces of the badlands on his skin, starlight blue and homesick. 

When Theo told him about his Conversational Russian courses, Boris was nearly sure his heart tumble out of his chest into his bowl of pickled cucumbers. He’d pick it up, wipe off the vinaigrette, and offer it plainly to Theo. _Keep it safe. Put behind your headboard where you sleep at night. Or tear it to shreds like I deserve. I don’t care; it’s yours forever now_.

He really meant it when he said he had never been to bed with another man. Not that he hadn’t been tempted. Dark clubs in Albania, Switzerland, Latvia, mafia-run, several foul-tasting mixed drinks. Plenty of bosses had sidepieces of either sex and were willing to turn a blind eye if one of their subordinates wanted to go on a college type self-discovery triste with a pretty thing in a back room.

Pretty things passed by Boris all the time. Club hopping uni kids, equals in the business, merchandise. Every one of them skinny off pills and powder. 

Boys came up to him and sat on his lap. Better him than someone seventy pounds heavier and forty years older. Boris could never bring himself to indulge. Disinterested prostitutes hired to work parties in shiny pants and fishnets that would squeeze the flesh of anyone on a healthy diet but hung idly at the back of their knees didn’t strike his fancy. But he liked having them on him. Liked their warmth and weight, as light as it was. Tucking his chin into the space between their neck and their shoulder and inhaling the bloody smell of scurvy on their breath, as revolting as it was nostalgic. Sometimes they would fondle his dick and he would get hard and then he would have to pay their bill and split before things got risky. It would be like a gross kind of adultery. 

He had a weird preoccupation with having to be in love with the person he had sex with. 

He loved Astrid enough to get her pregnant twice. He’d loved Kotku in the infatuation of boyhood and the finding of a kindred spirit. He even loved the woman he lost his virginity to, at the time her willingness seemed a fair reason. 

He really loved Theo.

Loved him so much that when Theo spent the night sucking down an entire bottle of tequila by himself and kissed Boris with abandon up against the wedding pictures on his wall and fucked him into the mattress in his Antwerp apartment and woke up naked and pissed off that Boris had forced him to go with a girl, Boris didn’t say anything. 

It depended on what Theo drank whether he would fuck rough or sweet. Whether he would indulge in foreplay or push into Boris without warning. Fruity girl drinks made it more likely for him to address Boris by name. Highballs made him play with Boris’s nipples more than his dick. And entertaining shots of any kind was a sure-fire way for erectile dysfunction. 

He was always at his best on pissed-out American beer. He would take off his glasses as a ploy to have Boris get closer and closer. That was when he was romantic, cupping Boris’s chin and kissing him slowly, a hand already fisted at the small of his back. 

He would have Boris undress for him, having him stop every time a piece of clothing was removed so he could run his hands over the newly exposed skin, drinking in the sight of him in the light of the lamps he purposefully turned on. Theo’s hungry mouth on his neck. The graze of teeth along his Adam’s apple made him shiver.

Boris felt sexy then. Like he was someone to be desired. 

He would have liked to do the same to Theo, give him the same reverence, but Theo left no time for that, his clothes quickly shed and his lips eagerly on Boris.

They fell on the bed, his legs opening automatically, and Theo let his mouth and hands roam over Boris’s body, ravishing him to distraction until all he could feel was Theo all over him, senses overrun, not bothered by the fact his hard dick had yet to be touched. 

Theo teased around his dick. Laying kisses on the insides of his thighs and licking up his balls. The tip of Theo’s nose bumped into the base of Boris’s dick, and Boris thought he could shudder into a pool of water. 

Then Theo turned Boris over, retrieving a bottle of lube from the dresser. They didn’t use condoms. Even if Theo had tried Boris would have stopped him. 

Theo opened him up gradually, drawing out the act until Boris was humping the mattress, desperate to cum and, just when he thought Theo would allow him to, he would draw his fingers out and stroke his flank, hushing Boris as he moaned beneath him, Theo’s erection pressing on his tailbone. 

Boris cursed at him in Russian; seeing if his college professors taught him the really useful things he’d need to speak to a Moskvich. Vengefully, Theo used a single finger to lightly brush against his prostate. Waves of butterflies flew up his spinal column in a messy, impatient formation. 

“Трахни меня,” Boris said, his face buried in his arms. “Трахни меня. Theo.”

Being fucked: the closet thing to compare it to was writing a suicide note. The sheer intimacy of it. Penetration. Utter emotional destruction. Boris was sure he was going to cry the first time it happened. It had hurt too. But only a little. It was too much and not enough at the same time. Boris had a gory fantasy of cutting a slit in Theo’s back for Boris to tuck his hands underneath while they had sex, or at least each of them pulling out a tooth so their blood would be in each other’s mouth when they kissed. The fantasy chilled Boris to the bone. They had only ever jerked each other off in Vegas.

When Theo finally entered Boris he did so with a gentleness Boris had never known from any other interaction he had with another human being. He was like an animal, steady and strong and led by instinct. All the air went out of Boris’s lungs as Theo lowered himself on top of him, chest to back flushed hot together. Boris clutched Theo’s hand to bring it to his mouth and bit down hard.

He fucked unbearably slowly. He fucked like they had all the time in the world. Raindrops stilled on windowsills, clockwork gears froze, red lights lasted lifetimes. Stars halted mid-supernova. 

His dick was pinned between his body and the mattress. He wanted to cum so much he thought his head would explode, but he needed Theo to make him cum so he suffered, writhing and smothering his helpless cries in a pillow.

Usually, Theo said nothing during their encounters but as he started to move in Boris he whispered, his voice blurred and lazy with drink, “Do you feel me? Do you feel me inside you?” Somehow his name morphed into baby then sweetheart then darling until Boris felt like some well-loved sex-dummy, a possession to be bought and marveled at, to be kept from harsh light or temperature. An artifact of beauty and the bruises on his neck, around his nipples, around his dick were an artist’s signature, his masterpiece marked. 

He smeared pet names on the back of Boris’s neck, his mouth watering, worrying Boris’s skin between his teeth.

“я так тебя люблю.”

Boris couldn’t what he wanted to say. _Do you understand me? Did those lessons teach you what you need to know? Did you know how much I wanted to say so that night? That I love you, Theo? That the sun came back into my life the same time you did? That I’d kill for you again?_

Utterly powerless, Boris let Theo make love to him in his home. The home that didn’t feel like one until Theo had done a load of laundry in the washing machine, until Theo had put out a cigarette on the window sill, until Theo used his bathrobe after a shower, his hair sticking to his skin and his glasses foggy and dew-dimpled. Until he had christened the master bedroom with smothered orgasm, thinking about how Theo stripped his shirt and trousers off one time when they nearly eluded a rainstorm and his underwear clung to his ass so Boris could see his flaccid dick move against his legs when he strode into the bathroom to get towels.

Boris wished he was lying on his back so he could kiss Theo over and over again. 

Boris wished Theo knew he was his best friend and how much that meant.

Boris clung to the bedsheets, Theo’s hand holding back the moans that trembled on the edge of escaping; the hair on his legs scratched against Boris; his nipples stood erect on Boris’s back. His breath smelled of wet yeast. 

Sweat, even in the middle of winter, dripped down their skin, which made holding each other difficult. They grappled with their bodies. Smooth, like prepubescents, there was hardly anything to grab. Boris sunk his nails into one of Theo’s asscheeks, intending to draw him farther inside. He felt his throat seal shut under a palm. 

The bones of Theo’s pelvis, dulled under muscle and years of real eating, knocked against harder and harder as Theo chased down his pleasure inside Boris, clasping him to his chest, choking him blindly. 

When he came, he didn’t pull out. He filled Boris up. Semen dripped down his thighs, his dick still untouched. 

Boris panted; his eyelids fluttered under the harsh yellow light of the bedside light as Theo turned him over. Theo fell on him, caressing his shoulders, his waist. His hand wriggled between their bodies and took hold of Boris. 

Theo jerks Boris off better than Boris can do himself. He knows Boris better than he knows himself. He’s kinder than Boris is to himself.

He finishes the job fast, his face buried in Boris’s neck, sucking and kissing and working off his post-orgasm affection while Boris holds him close and cums with a whimpering sigh.

Boris often wonders what it would be to have sex with a sober Theo. He thinks it would be bad the first time but it would get better. He’s too afraid to find out either way.

Boris hates himself every time they walk into a bar, and Theo orders his first drink of the night in his elementary Dutch. Still, he says their toast in unison and swallows his sorrow.


End file.
